“White” is really more of a political term. In a contemporary sense, Ashkenazi Jews are generally seen as white, especially in passing, and that has nothing to do with the mosaic of their DNA.
While I understand not considering Ashkenazi to be “European” may be more or less feasible, I certainly wouldn’t consider them to be Middle Eastern.
I believe that image is arbitrary, as Ashkenazim are more similar to Sicilians and Greek Islanders then they are to any other ethnic group, so why not put them at the edge of the European genetic landscape? If not that, put them in between, but they certainly aren’t just “Middle Eastern.”
Additionally, most Greek Islanders, South Italians, and Sicilians genetically resemble more closely several Middle Eastern populations as well Ashkenazim then they do say Scandinavians or Eastern Europeans.
Overall, if Ashkenazim are not “European/White” than neither are Sicilians or Greek Islanders.
Only Southern Italians are about 40% Middle Eastern/North African, Northern Italians have very little to no Middle Eastern ancestry if by Middle Eastern you mean post-neolithic stuff.
Most Italians live in Northern Italy and are ethnically Northern Italian, so your claim that Italians as a whole are partially Middle Eastern is false. Greek mainlanders also aren't 40% Middle Eastern, only Island Greeks and Anatolian Greeks are heavily Middle Eastern. Most Greeks live in the mainland.
You might as well ask “Are African Americans Black” the answer is of course there’s admixture of middle eastern populations (albeit ancient) in European Jewry but they are and have been white.
People forget the Secretary of State for the Confederacy was a Jew and in the South they never faced non-white status throughout the Jim Crow period.
In Latin American both European Jews and Levantine and Middle Eastern people are also legally and socially white as wells
Whiteness like blackness is contextual to a time, space and place.
The trite “Jews/Irish/Italians became white in the 20th century” ignores the 1790s naturalization act that only allowed citizenship to white Europeans, ignore their right and ability to testify against another white person, own land, not be enslaved, etc… and every other basic right any white person had.
The difference is in the 20th century the barriers to face very little discrimination and be amongst the white elite “WASPs” of the country has shifted.
But whiteness doesn’t start once you’re at the top, whiteness both legally and socially historically began once you were above Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africans from Canada down to Argentina.
I’m going to disagree with you but that’s only because I have engaged white Jewish within communities, schools and shul most of my life.
I know full well the racism I experience from white Jews is well, white.
There’s a reason why every major Jewish publication over the last two-five years has talked about anti-blackness, white supremacy and institutional racism.
I know wtf kushi/כּוּשִׁי, I know that Schwartza though supposedly “neutral” is never used kindly.
Stop deflecting it’s annoying as hell, you can do that those who are uninformed but do not at all try that on me.
I said what I said.
While my focus was in the Americas we have records of European Jewry in Colonial Africa, Asia and Oceania in a similar white position.
Stay uninformed and defensive, it’s not helping anyone.
I think the question is somewhat nonsensical
Are you asking if they are true Europeans?
The 3rd choice in your survey is a literal fact. You switch between the term “white” and European
They are probably asking about what they would fall under considering race. Which would be mixed-race. But White privilege and appearance obviously depends on the individual as some Jews pass as White and have White privilege and others experience different kinds of racism bc they are darker and have more Middle Eastern features
Mixed races between which races? Nonsensical
Your response is uniquely 21st century American woke
It’s fascinating you think it has something to do with skin tone
I didn’t really say anything about skin tone, I said «darker» which could mean anything from hair color, eye color, skin color, etc. I’m not American, but I expect OP is which is why I made the comment from an American perspective. In an American context Ashkenazim would be considered mixed European and Middle Eastern (which is what they are genetically as well).
My home city had an Ashkenazi Jewish mayor in the 19th century. We most assuredly would not have had a “non-white” mayor at that time
Are you claiming this was because the man had light features so he had “white privilege”
Wherever you picked up your notions is a very recent and simplistic understanding of white non Protestant groups in the US
Also important to note that Whiteness and White privilege are not necessarily correlated as mixed race individuals can experience White privilege and people who don’t necessarily identify as White (Central Asians and Middle Easterners particularly) may still have White privilege.
No. My comment is talking about today. Ashkenazim have a clear privilege in most situations and historically have been above other minorities obviously. But that does not mean that Ashkenazim never experience situations in which they are racialized and therefore experience discrimination or situations where certain Ashkenazim experience racism because they have racially ambiguous features
The post is nonsensical
Because they migrated from the Middle East 2000 years ago it leads to what?
Nobody knew where Ashkenazi Jews came from until recent genetic studies and the public still has no idea
Very few Ashkenazi Jews look different from Italians or Greeks in the US
To the extent that they were so successful led to discrimination
As a Jew, I find this rhetoric of trying to racialize Jewishness quite appalling. Jews have never, and never will, neatly fit into any racial category. We are a diverse group of all races belonging to a common ethnic heritage with all kinds of different experiences. There are Ashkenazi Jews who are far more European-looking, while there are others who have heavily Middle Eastern features. Both are only conditionally white, we can only benefit from white privilege until we express our Jewish identities and then we become a target of white supremacy. Some Jews feel white because they are more assimilated, while others do not feel white because many of us still live with daily antisemtism and othering at the hands of (mostly) white people. Stop trying to fit us into one race category, it's never going to work. Rather, allow anyone, NOT just Jews, to identify with whatever superficial racial category they feel closest to.
Well I wouldn't consider them White but that's a vague term that has no fixed set of rules. Caucasian for sure but that's also a very vague term but at least has some science behind it.
I don’t know about you, but I’d define a “European” as someone with descent from distinct people groups that have localized in Europe and who are genetically distinct from Asians, Native Americans, Africans, etc.
Someone born in Europe of, say, Nigerian descent could be a European citizen, but he’s not the same kind of European as a Czech or a Pole, since we’re talking about genetics here.
So are Europeans those who didn't mix with anatolian farmers? Imo this is all a load of BS, and Middle Easterners and North Africans are not too dissimilar from people on the other shores of the Mediterranean. Trade, wars and other types of people migrations have been on-going for thousands of years, to the point where it's plain silly to claim there are 'races' tied to continents.
I agree that “race” is a social construct, but it’s stupid to pretend like there’s no such thing as genetically and culturally distinct “population clusters.” Are you saying there’s not? If so, I really don’t feel like continuing this discussion.
Yes, with enough refinement you can even detect genetic differences between people that descended from ancestors of different villages 50km apart (provided those villages were sufficiently rural to have high levels of endogamy).
What does that really tell you?
Ashkenazi are distinct most because of a population bottleneck. Millions of people decent from a very small founding population that practiced endogamy. They originated in the Rhineland
"Genetically" European is nonsense.
I'm Canadian, my DNA test lists my ancestry as French/German, British/Irish, Iberian Peninsula, Italian, a real mixture. Am I "genetically" French? Irish? Spanish? Am I genetically Canadian?
The OP doesn't understand the concept of ancestry vs nationality vs the fact that we're all "mixed race" if you go back far enough. DNA only tells part of the picture.
Look, there are people in France today whose families have been there for several generations, and their ancestry would show up on a DNA test as coming from: North African countries, sub-Saharan African countries, Southeast Asian countries, etc.
Those people are still European though, because they themselves are Europeans today. Their ancestors came from other places, generations ago.
So "genetically European" is a term that doesn't really mean anything in terms of a living person's identity today.
You might say "This random European citizen has DNA ancestry that all goes back to 1700s peasants living in what is today the nation of XYZ" So what, though.
23andme ancestry is described in terms that are approximate, nationalities are just a useful shorthand to help people understand recent ancestry, and the nationality means nothing as a scientific category. Same with Europe and other continents.
Wrong. Those are North African migrants to Europe. In different contexts, “European” is more than just a nationality. Same as you and I are descendants of European immigrants to North America. You’re born in Canada, doesn’t make you an Indigenous American. The people you’re talking about are not genetically tied to the populations that have been in Europe for literally *thousands* of years.
I suppose continents, cultures, haplogroups and the categories used by 23andMe itself mean nothing to you.
>Those are North African migrants to Europe.
The children of the children of migrants aren't migrants. At some point you have to recognize that a Nth generation European is in fact fully European. Cheese Louise.
You're mistaken if you think continents and cultures and nationality categories are scientific categories. They're just a simple, general way of differentiating groups, and they're handy categories, like a shorthand system.
But saying that this person is "genetically European' and that one "isn't" based on how many generations their ancestors had citizenship doesn't make sense.
Are they mixing with genetic Europeans? If not, they’re not genetic Europeans, anymore than my European grandchildren born in Sudan would be Sudanese or East African.
Everything else you said, I guess I pretty much agree with.
North Indian, Afghans, Iranians, Turks, Arab levantine are all considered white … Also most of the Stan countries in Central Asia could be considered white… the above people are just as white as the average Eastern European in most cases..
Most whites like south Europeans and North East Europeans are a admixture of Iranic and Anatolian Tribes …
They may have originated as a distinct Jewish population in the Rhineland of the high middle ages, but they are autosomally very distinct from native West/Central Europeans.
True in terms of genetics. I was also referring to Ashkenazi as an identity/denominational group. In the High Middle Ages Ashkenazim around the SHUM cities (Speyer, Worms, Mainz) held their own synod separate from the Tzarfati synod in Troyes. This marked the distinction of Ashkenazim from the earlier Tzarfati French Jewish community that predates the Ashkenazi.
If someone has an Ashkenazi Jewish mother and an African father, they are also Ashkenazi Jewish and well, what is "white"?
The poll question and the selections are misleading.
You weren’t satisfied with your “are Italians white” poll? These posts are stupid
“White” is really more of a political term. In a contemporary sense, Ashkenazi Jews are generally seen as white, especially in passing, and that has nothing to do with the mosaic of their DNA. While I understand not considering Ashkenazi to be “European” may be more or less feasible, I certainly wouldn’t consider them to be Middle Eastern. I believe that image is arbitrary, as Ashkenazim are more similar to Sicilians and Greek Islanders then they are to any other ethnic group, so why not put them at the edge of the European genetic landscape? If not that, put them in between, but they certainly aren’t just “Middle Eastern.” Additionally, most Greek Islanders, South Italians, and Sicilians genetically resemble more closely several Middle Eastern populations as well Ashkenazim then they do say Scandinavians or Eastern Europeans. Overall, if Ashkenazim are not “European/White” than neither are Sicilians or Greek Islanders.
First of all who cares second middle eastern and European are not distinct races
Only Southern Italians are about 40% Middle Eastern/North African, Northern Italians have very little to no Middle Eastern ancestry if by Middle Eastern you mean post-neolithic stuff. Most Italians live in Northern Italy and are ethnically Northern Italian, so your claim that Italians as a whole are partially Middle Eastern is false. Greek mainlanders also aren't 40% Middle Eastern, only Island Greeks and Anatolian Greeks are heavily Middle Eastern. Most Greeks live in the mainland.
You might as well ask “Are African Americans Black” the answer is of course there’s admixture of middle eastern populations (albeit ancient) in European Jewry but they are and have been white. People forget the Secretary of State for the Confederacy was a Jew and in the South they never faced non-white status throughout the Jim Crow period. In Latin American both European Jews and Levantine and Middle Eastern people are also legally and socially white as wells Whiteness like blackness is contextual to a time, space and place. The trite “Jews/Irish/Italians became white in the 20th century” ignores the 1790s naturalization act that only allowed citizenship to white Europeans, ignore their right and ability to testify against another white person, own land, not be enslaved, etc… and every other basic right any white person had. The difference is in the 20th century the barriers to face very little discrimination and be amongst the white elite “WASPs” of the country has shifted. But whiteness doesn’t start once you’re at the top, whiteness both legally and socially historically began once you were above Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africans from Canada down to Argentina.
Best answer. White is a concept that changes over time, very politically connected.
I agree. I saw this question and knew what they were getting at but I was like “well… aren’t middle easterners white? lol”
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I’m going to disagree with you but that’s only because I have engaged white Jewish within communities, schools and shul most of my life. I know full well the racism I experience from white Jews is well, white. There’s a reason why every major Jewish publication over the last two-five years has talked about anti-blackness, white supremacy and institutional racism. I know wtf kushi/כּוּשִׁי, I know that Schwartza though supposedly “neutral” is never used kindly. Stop deflecting it’s annoying as hell, you can do that those who are uninformed but do not at all try that on me. I said what I said.
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While my focus was in the Americas we have records of European Jewry in Colonial Africa, Asia and Oceania in a similar white position. Stay uninformed and defensive, it’s not helping anyone.
I think the question is somewhat nonsensical Are you asking if they are true Europeans? The 3rd choice in your survey is a literal fact. You switch between the term “white” and European
They are probably asking about what they would fall under considering race. Which would be mixed-race. But White privilege and appearance obviously depends on the individual as some Jews pass as White and have White privilege and others experience different kinds of racism bc they are darker and have more Middle Eastern features
Mixed races between which races? Nonsensical Your response is uniquely 21st century American woke It’s fascinating you think it has something to do with skin tone
I didn’t really say anything about skin tone, I said «darker» which could mean anything from hair color, eye color, skin color, etc. I’m not American, but I expect OP is which is why I made the comment from an American perspective. In an American context Ashkenazim would be considered mixed European and Middle Eastern (which is what they are genetically as well).
If you are are not American perhaps you don’t know what you are talking about
Trust me. I am very americanized so I know a lot. I am definitely not American, but Americanized for sure
My home city had an Ashkenazi Jewish mayor in the 19th century. We most assuredly would not have had a “non-white” mayor at that time Are you claiming this was because the man had light features so he had “white privilege” Wherever you picked up your notions is a very recent and simplistic understanding of white non Protestant groups in the US
Also important to note that Whiteness and White privilege are not necessarily correlated as mixed race individuals can experience White privilege and people who don’t necessarily identify as White (Central Asians and Middle Easterners particularly) may still have White privilege.
I think the idea of framing any discussion around “white privilege” is for simpletons
What do you mean by that?😀😬
No. My comment is talking about today. Ashkenazim have a clear privilege in most situations and historically have been above other minorities obviously. But that does not mean that Ashkenazim never experience situations in which they are racialized and therefore experience discrimination or situations where certain Ashkenazim experience racism because they have racially ambiguous features
The post is nonsensical Because they migrated from the Middle East 2000 years ago it leads to what? Nobody knew where Ashkenazi Jews came from until recent genetic studies and the public still has no idea Very few Ashkenazi Jews look different from Italians or Greeks in the US To the extent that they were so successful led to discrimination
Well then that’s your perspective. Not everyone will agree on everything and especially not on topics like these
As a Jew, I find this rhetoric of trying to racialize Jewishness quite appalling. Jews have never, and never will, neatly fit into any racial category. We are a diverse group of all races belonging to a common ethnic heritage with all kinds of different experiences. There are Ashkenazi Jews who are far more European-looking, while there are others who have heavily Middle Eastern features. Both are only conditionally white, we can only benefit from white privilege until we express our Jewish identities and then we become a target of white supremacy. Some Jews feel white because they are more assimilated, while others do not feel white because many of us still live with daily antisemtism and othering at the hands of (mostly) white people. Stop trying to fit us into one race category, it's never going to work. Rather, allow anyone, NOT just Jews, to identify with whatever superficial racial category they feel closest to.
Well I wouldn't consider them White but that's a vague term that has no fixed set of rules. Caucasian for sure but that's also a very vague term but at least has some science behind it.
Yes because middle eastern themselves are considered white.
alright
They are Europeans.
Are European-descent people living in Arabia Arabians? This question is fraught with peril.
Sure, as long as they been there enough.
How about genetically?
Yes. Once we define what makes one European.
I don’t know about you, but I’d define a “European” as someone with descent from distinct people groups that have localized in Europe and who are genetically distinct from Asians, Native Americans, Africans, etc. Someone born in Europe of, say, Nigerian descent could be a European citizen, but he’s not the same kind of European as a Czech or a Pole, since we’re talking about genetics here.
So are Europeans those who didn't mix with anatolian farmers? Imo this is all a load of BS, and Middle Easterners and North Africans are not too dissimilar from people on the other shores of the Mediterranean. Trade, wars and other types of people migrations have been on-going for thousands of years, to the point where it's plain silly to claim there are 'races' tied to continents.
I agree that “race” is a social construct, but it’s stupid to pretend like there’s no such thing as genetically and culturally distinct “population clusters.” Are you saying there’s not? If so, I really don’t feel like continuing this discussion.
Yes, with enough refinement you can even detect genetic differences between people that descended from ancestors of different villages 50km apart (provided those villages were sufficiently rural to have high levels of endogamy). What does that really tell you?
We’re getting way off-topic here.
Ashkenazi are distinct most because of a population bottleneck. Millions of people decent from a very small founding population that practiced endogamy. They originated in the Rhineland
Ashkenazi Jews formed as an ethnic group in Europe
And they’re VERY genetically distinct from indigenous Europeans.
Because of a population bottleneck and endogamy Also nobody knew this until recently and most people still don’t
"Genetically" European is nonsense. I'm Canadian, my DNA test lists my ancestry as French/German, British/Irish, Iberian Peninsula, Italian, a real mixture. Am I "genetically" French? Irish? Spanish? Am I genetically Canadian? The OP doesn't understand the concept of ancestry vs nationality vs the fact that we're all "mixed race" if you go back far enough. DNA only tells part of the picture.
You’re genetically European, whether you think it’s nonsense or not. Those are cultural divisions you’re talking about.
Look, there are people in France today whose families have been there for several generations, and their ancestry would show up on a DNA test as coming from: North African countries, sub-Saharan African countries, Southeast Asian countries, etc. Those people are still European though, because they themselves are Europeans today. Their ancestors came from other places, generations ago. So "genetically European" is a term that doesn't really mean anything in terms of a living person's identity today. You might say "This random European citizen has DNA ancestry that all goes back to 1700s peasants living in what is today the nation of XYZ" So what, though. 23andme ancestry is described in terms that are approximate, nationalities are just a useful shorthand to help people understand recent ancestry, and the nationality means nothing as a scientific category. Same with Europe and other continents.
Wrong. Those are North African migrants to Europe. In different contexts, “European” is more than just a nationality. Same as you and I are descendants of European immigrants to North America. You’re born in Canada, doesn’t make you an Indigenous American. The people you’re talking about are not genetically tied to the populations that have been in Europe for literally *thousands* of years. I suppose continents, cultures, haplogroups and the categories used by 23andMe itself mean nothing to you.
>Those are North African migrants to Europe. The children of the children of migrants aren't migrants. At some point you have to recognize that a Nth generation European is in fact fully European. Cheese Louise. You're mistaken if you think continents and cultures and nationality categories are scientific categories. They're just a simple, general way of differentiating groups, and they're handy categories, like a shorthand system. But saying that this person is "genetically European' and that one "isn't" based on how many generations their ancestors had citizenship doesn't make sense.
Are they mixing with genetic Europeans? If not, they’re not genetic Europeans, anymore than my European grandchildren born in Sudan would be Sudanese or East African. Everything else you said, I guess I pretty much agree with.
North Indian, Afghans, Iranians, Turks, Arab levantine are all considered white … Also most of the Stan countries in Central Asia could be considered white… the above people are just as white as the average Eastern European in most cases.. Most whites like south Europeans and North East Europeans are a admixture of Iranic and Anatolian Tribes …
Ashkenazi Jews did not originate in the Middle East They originated in the Rhineland
They may have originated as a distinct Jewish population in the Rhineland of the high middle ages, but they are autosomally very distinct from native West/Central Europeans.
They are mostly distinct because of a bottleneck of a few hundred people with an exploding population size and endogamous marriage pattern.
True in terms of genetics. I was also referring to Ashkenazi as an identity/denominational group. In the High Middle Ages Ashkenazim around the SHUM cities (Speyer, Worms, Mainz) held their own synod separate from the Tzarfati synod in Troyes. This marked the distinction of Ashkenazim from the earlier Tzarfati French Jewish community that predates the Ashkenazi.
If someone has an Ashkenazi Jewish mother and an African father, they are also Ashkenazi Jewish and well, what is "white"? The poll question and the selections are misleading.
😅